On May 26, the Connecticut House passed HB 6435, to let people register to vote at the polls on election day. Such voters would need to show a drivers license or a utility bill, confirming their address. Now the bill goes to the Senate.
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On May 26, U.S. District Court Judge Robert L. Vining upheld Georgia’s ballot access law for independent candidates for U.S. House. Coffield v Handel, 1:08-cv-2755. The 3-page decision is here. It says that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the same law in 1971 in Jenness v Fortson.
The decision does not mention the fact that the law is so strict, no independent candidate for U.S. House has completed the 5% petition since 1964, and back then, all congressional districts fit within county boundaries, so it was much easier to get high validity rates for district petitions (signers generally know what county they live in, but not which congressional district they live in). The decision does not mention any other U.S. Supreme Court decision.
The decision does not acknowledge that the reason the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Georgia law in 1971 was that statewide 5% petitions had succeeded in Georgia in both 1966 and 1968. The decision does not mention three later U.S. Supreme Court decisions that say lower courts should invalidate ballot access requirements if the record shows that virtually no one ever meets those requirements. Faye Coffield will appeal to the 11th circuit.
On May 27, Louisiana HB 776 was defeated in the House Committee on the House and Government Affairs, by a vote of 13-4. Thanks to Randall Hayes for this news. HB 776 would have eliminated congressional primaries for qualified parties with registration under 40,000 members.
The hearing lasted 90 minutes. Representatives of the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the NAACP, and the College Republicans, all testified against the bill.
Here is the rebuttal brief of the NAACP (in the U.S. Supreme Court) in NAACP v Billups, 08-1231. The issue is the constitutionality of Georgia’s law requiring voters at the polls to show a goverment photo-ID card. This current round of briefs is to determine whether the Supreme Court will hear the case. Especially interesting is footnote 1, comparing the Georgia ID law with the Indiana ID law.
The Supreme Court will consider whether to hear this case at its June 4 conference.
Late on the evening of May 27, the Texas legislature passed HB 1193, which relaxes the deadline for qualified parties to certify the names of their presidential and vice-presidential nominees. The old deadline was not met by either the Democratic nor Republican Parties in 2008, but the Secretary of State placed their nominees on the November ballot anyway. HB 1193 sets the deadline as one business day after the national convention of any qualified party adjourns.